Philip Williams

Philip Williams has been the ABC's Europe Correspondent since July 2008 and is based in London. This is Philip's second stint in London for the ABC, and he has also worked as Tokyo correspondent (1990 to 1993).

A British farmer has had to put down his herd of cattle because "they would try to kill" people. Known as "Nazi cows" the Heck cattle were originally bred as a master race of bovine in Germany in the 1930s.

The United Nations Committee Against Torture examines Australia on a range of issues, including the work of the current royal commission into historical child sexual abuse and violence against women, and levels strong criticism over the government's handling of asylum seekers

Seventy per cent of fresh chickens sold in British supermarkets are contaminated with the potentially fatal food-poisoning bug campylobacter, a UK government survey reveals. One chain had 28 per cent of its fresh chicken classified as highly contaminated.

It has been a big year for news, and from brutal conflicts to disease epidemics, the headlines have hardly been cheerful. Europe correspondent Philip Williams has seen more than his fair share of the bad and the ugly, but says nothing was more depressing than covering the aftermath of the MH17 disaster.

The US and the European Union will impose tough new sanctions against Russian companies and individuals in the strongest international action yet over Moscow's support for rebels in eastern Ukraine.

The move,which Australia will not follow at this stage, comes amid reports that apartment blocks are being shelled in the rebel-held city where Australian police aiming to get to the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash site are based.

The sanctions targets include banks, oil companies, defence and technology industries as the West seeks to pressure Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is hopeful Ukrainian MPs will ratify an agreement to allow Australians to carry weapons on the MH17 crash site.

Ms Bishop is in Kiev holding talks with president Petro Poroshenko and other officials and says the plan to carry weapons is just a contingency.

Ms Bishop says the Australian Federal Police mission at the crash site will remain unarmed but says the addition of Ukrainian parliamentary approval for weapons is simply a wise contingency plan.

The announcement comes as fighting between the pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops forced the abandonment of the joint Dutch-Australian police mission to get to the site for the second day in a row.